"...the hills of western Maine,.....where the subtle matters and the spectacular distracts."Bernd Heinrich in A Year in the Maine Woods

Monday, January 14, 2008

Child Protection

The areas of my practice from which I get the most satisfaction are the cases involving children. They are usually gut-wrenching, sad stories and it isn't easy to explain why I get satisfaction from the cases. Perhaps it is because before I was a lawyer, I was a teacher and a mother or perhaps it's because I have always believed that no bad situation has to be permanent, that we all have or can find the tools to change our lives. Finding solutions in cases involving children is complex and not unlike untangling five or six skeins of yarn that the kittens have played with for a week before someone comes along to help untangle the skeins. In the case of children, sometimes it is many years before any one shows up to help untangle things. So, that said, Daughter S showed me this video on youtube. It isn't about people, it's about water buffaloes and lions and at least one crocodile. And it turns out alright for those of you who get nervous. But, what I'm going to start expecting out of parents on my caseload is the protective capacity of a water buffalo. A new standard.

2 comments:

That is quite a video! I remember vacationing at Kruger National Park when I was a school girl in South Africa, but I never saw anything like this ;-)Of course we all cheer for the baby buffalo, but the laws of nature are often severe and lions and crocodiles have to eat too. But the children you have represented should have every chance for a normal life.

You are right, the lions and crocodiles do have to eat--probably that makes my analogy to child protection invalid--harm doesn't have to come to children to make life go on.

The beauty of the video, to me, was that the herd wasn't going to let their youngest and most vulnerable be harmed without protecting him. I don't always see that with the people I work with, unfortunately.

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